Published on Oct 23, 2003
Harry Nilsson was a musician’s musician. More a songwriter and
performer than a ‘rock star’, he never toured, rarely performed on
TV, and was more often remembered for being publicly accorded the
title of The Beatles’ favorite American singer than actually
singing anything. This high praise was accorded for his 1967
release
Pandemonium Shadow Show, his first original recording, and
he continued recording through 1970 on the strength of his quirky
wit, one single in the hit movie Midnight Cowboy (“Everybody’s
Talkin’), and his magnificent three-and-a-half-octave range.
1971, though, appears to have brought the decision to dabble in
the mainstream, and he released his most unabashedly pop effort,
Nilsson Schmilsson. There’s a lot that has been written
about this CD; it’s almost crushed sometimes under its own critical
weight. Maybe it’s time for a fresh look.
First off,
Nilsson Schmilsson is a lousy CD in the technical sense.
With no liner notes, almost unreadable back cover (which is
obviously just a photographic reduction of the back of the original
LP), and marginal production values, it should be considered a CD
in name only. I have checked around to the usual sources, and there
doesn’t seem to be a remastered version. This is a shame, in many
ways; Nilsson’s voice was subtle and expressive enough that this
Cro-Magnon era CD doesn’t do justice to it. The production is, in
fact, so bad that I can’t actually judge a couple of tracks; “Early
In The Morning” is a specific problem, as I can’t tell if the
hollowness is supposed to be there or if it’s just the sucky
recorded-in-a-bathroom analog technology.
That rant over, the rest of the songs are an interesting bunch.
Harry Nilsson’s influences were eclectic, to say the least; he was
just as likely to include Tin Pan Alley flourishes as early-70s
pop/rock standbys. Never quite in step with the times, he was a
musical jack-of-all-trades, and it shows on
Nilsson Schmilsson. Sound and influences are all over the
map here; he jumps from barrelhouse to R&B to Cat Stevens-like
soft pop without a moment’s notice. If you can handle that, it’s
actually really impressive; he does all these sounds at least
competently, and some of them are downright elegant.
“Without You” is one of the greatest pop songs ever written, and
if you only know the Mariah Carey version, shame on you. (Mariah’s
wasn’t bad, to be fair, but Nilsson’s blows her away.) “Coconut” is
one of those songs like Todd Rundgren’s “Bang On The Drum”; you’ve
heard it, but you didn’t know a serious musician actually recorded
it, and it’s still pretty funny. “The Moonbeam Song” is sweet and
wistful, with a delicate acoustic guitar. The highlight for me,
however, was “Down”; a driving rocker with a truly great horn line,
this is an undiscovered gem.
However — and you knew there would be a however — there are
some clunkers. Songs like “Driving Along” suffer from trite lyrics
and too obvious a Beatles influence. “I’ll Never Leave You” is
supposed to sound rich and full; instead, it just sounds lugubrious
and halting, a funeral march for a love song. And while “Jump In
The Fire” was a chart hit, it left me cold; what could have been a
passable rock song dragged on too long in pointless instrumental
jamming.
Most rock critics are like sheep; someone somewhere anointed
Nilsson Schmilsson as a rock classic, so everyone since then
has repeated the wisdom verbatim. It might be better to accept the
album for what it is; a piece of flawed brilliance, where the
highlights and lowlights combine into a mixed bag. Harry Nilsson
would never be this good again; the problem remains that it’s not
as good as a lot of people claim it to be in the first place.